During 2016, Will Smith and Margot Robbie managed the team in director David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Feedback wasn’t great enough, to say the least, but the movie did extremely great that Warner Bros. ordered a reboot due out in 2021, this one entitled The Suicide Squad.

Hopes from the Movie 

There have been a pair of trailers for the film, the most current of which came out on June 22, 2021. Before that, on March 26, DC announced the explosive (and explosively funny) first trailer for the movie. Last August, at DC’s FanDome event, director James Gunn and Co. revealed a pack of new aspects about the movie, giving the audience their first impression of which actors are featured in the movie, along with an expansive behind-the-scenes featurette. Now that the Suicide Squad is actually gearing up for big summer action, it seems like a good moment for a rundown of everything you need to know about The Suicide Squad. 

James Gunn, best recognized for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, is the writer-director after The Suicide Squad. Gunn was selected to write the movie in October of 2018, a few months after Disney fired him from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 due to traditional, inapplicable joke tweets. Possibly because the tweets were brought up a portion of targeted warfare by alt-right provocateurs, Disney ultimately changed its decision and re-hired Gunn. Nevertheless, Guardians 3 would have to wait since the director was already assigned for The Suicide Squad. Gunn is the leading person to make both an MCU movie and a modern DC movie. At DC FanDome, Gunn said the movie – which finished shooting in February – was “by far the biggest movie I’ve ever produced” and declared it had as many cracks, collisions, and crashes as any other film ever shown.

The difference between 2021 and 2016 Suicide Squad

The Suicide Squad is not a sequel to the 2016 film, as producer Peter Safran described ComicBook.com in April of 2019. But it’s totally not a sequel, either, as there will be some returning actors and performers from the Ayer movie. This is by DC’s more laissez-faire way to continuity ever since Justice League underwhelmed critically and at the box office. Films like Aquaman and Shazam! have nominally been in the DCEU, but they largely exist on their personal strength. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey was technically a sequel to the opening Suicide Squad, but aside from Margot Robbie’s titular character and one tossed-off line referencing the stories of the pioneering movie, it didn’t really answer the 2016 movie at all. Expect The Suicide Squad to take what served from the first film and leave behind anything that didn’t. Continuity doesn’t matter nearly as much as having some entertainment and joy.

Return and Adjustment of Cast

Margot Robbie

Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn will come back for the third time in The Suicide Squad. She’ll be accompanied by three of her 2016 fellow-stars: Viola Davis will reprise her character as agent Amanda Waller, the minds behind the Squad’s mission; Joel Kinnaman will perform Rick Flag, the team’s handler; and Jai Courtney will act as the Aussie villain Captain Boomerang.

Will Smith

Will Smith will not be reprising his role as Deadshot, Jared Leto’s Joker is possibly too twisted for a reprise appearance (despite showing up in Zack Snyder’s Justice League), and nobody from the Birds of Prey cast, aside from Robbie, is proved to come back, either. 

Although most of the cast had been announced earlier, it wasn’t until DC’s fandom event on August 22, 2020, that the full list of new characters was reported— and most of them are very obscure for the casual DC viewer.

Idris Elba

Idris Elba is performing Bloodsport, a mercenary with high-tech weaponry who is traditionally a Superman villain in the comics. In June, the trailer released June exhibits that he’s operating with the Suicide Squad because Waller uses his daughter Tyla (Storm Reid) as leverage. We also hear that he “put Superman in the ICU” with a Kryptonite bullet, which is notably hard-core.

Pete Davidson

Pete Davidson acts as Blackguard, a villain to the time-traveling star Booster Gold who uses high-tech armor. (He is also terrified of werewolves, possibly.) Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi is performing the telepathic Flash villain The Thinker. 

John Cena

John Cena acts as Peacemaker, who he explained during FanDome as a “douchey Captain America.” Nathan Fillion plays T.D.K. — and it’s rumored that “T.D.K.” is an acronym for “The Detachable Kid,” a new title for one of DC’s most notorious actors, a wannabe Legion of Super-Heroes member named as Arm-Fall-Off Boy.

David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior and  Mayling Ng

David Dastmalchian performs Polka-Dot Man, a corny Batman villain (and a personal favorite of Gunn’s); Daniela Melchior presents Ratcatcher 2, an additional Batman villain who can manage vermin; and Mayling Ng performs Mongal, an alien invader.

Flula Borg

Javelin, an Olympic athlete-turned-Green Lantern villain, will be presented by Flula Borg. At the same time, we finally discovered who will be voicing King Shark, a large walking shark, as James Gunn announced on Twitter that it’s none other than Sylvester Stallone.

Michael Rooker

And, because this is a James Gunn movie, two of his regular collaborators arrive too: Michael Rooker performs Savant, an intelligent blackmailer, while Gunn’s buddy Sean Gunn, who did on-set stop-motion work as Rocket Raccoon in Guardians, will once again get into the mo-cap costume to present a rodent, this time a character called Weasel. 

Storm Reid

In addition, Storm Reid performs Bloodsport’s daughter Tyla, Juan Diego Botto is General Luna, Joaquín Cosío is Major General Suarez, and Jennifer Holland is Emilia Harcourt.

BTS Voices

Tinashe Kajese, Julio Ruiz, and Taika Waititi, who many originally considered might provide the sound of King Shark, will also perform in the film in undisclosed roles.

Don’t know who most of these actors are? That’s fine! It’s kind of the point. Suicide Squad, especially in Gunn’s hands, is an excuse to use a group of mysterious characters and either turn them into fan-favorites or eliminate them off without a second’s uncertainty— or on both scenarios.

Trailer

The first proper trailer for The Suicide Squad hinted at the film appearance of another DC figure— one of the most unfamiliar but most significant villains in comics stories. The starfish-like kaiju is Starro, an alien invader who has the difference of being the main evil guy the Justice League ever encountered.

The June trailer makes it apparent that Starro is continuing to be the villain in The Suicide Squad, or at least the enemy, since pretty much all the main cast is the “villains” — that’s kind of the whole point. Waller acknowledges that the Squad’s mission is to eradicate every last trace of “Project Starfish,” clarifying to Cena’s Peacemaker that the title has nothing to do with buttholes. Instead, it’s likely that “Project Starfish” is some sort of secret plan to tackle Starro’s mental and mind-controlling strengths. Probably, it all went indirectly, and it’s up to the Squad to beat a large starfish. Remember when superhero films were linked with the scenario about being serious? What a time to be ready for survival.

The trailer doesn’t exactly expose too much in terms of story, other than proving that the Squad will be in some Central American-type setting and ultimately battle Starro. The enclosed red-band trailer is instead more focused on recreating the “regulations” of the Suicide Squad and therefore exhibiting the R-rated tone. Amanda Waller suggests a club of convicts reduced prison sentences if they either complete their purpose or perish in trying, and bombs are installed in everybody’s heads if they try to jump ship. But King Shark literally cuts a dude in half, and John Cena’s Peacemaker declares that it would be “no problemo” for him to eat each dick on a beach “in the name of freedom,” so yeah, very James Gunn.

Movie's Correspondence to 70s and 80s' Movies  

The earlier FanDome story starred a show clip with a pack of juicy behind-the-scenes footage, but it didn’t give away much in the way of the story either. The clip, which starred heavy gunfire and talk of “bombing genitals,” certainly makes the movie seem compressed with actions. At FanDome, Gunn said it has “more blasts than any film ever” and emphasized that it had a heavy volume of special effects, both of which appear to be carried out by the trailer. Producer Peter Safran equated it to a “gritty 1970s war film linked with the genius mind of James Gunn’s actors and hilarious comedy.” 

As a fandom, Gunn said he recognized the movie to be a pure sequel to humor writer John Ostrander’s original 1987 Suicide Squad line rather than an adaptation. “It has the quality and the lifeblood of the Ostrander works,” Gunn said, noting that he was just combining some of the amazing and mysterious characters that have been produced for DC in the years since the comic finished. 

Premier and Streaming

The Suicide Squad movie is expected to hit theaters on August 6, 2021, and it will also stream on HBO Max for subscriptions on that corresponding day for no further cost, as is the program for all 2021 Warner Bros. releases. (It will leave HBO Max one month after it premieres, so sees quickly.) It appears that The Suicide Squad was saved from the most disruptive aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. In April, Gunn tweeted that they were fortunate to cover shooting and set up the capability to edit from the crew’s homes before COVID-19 locked down the movie industry. During FanDome, he again declared that the film would hit cinemas and movie houses on August 6, 2021.